The founder of Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) company, has warned that the decline of global free trade in semiconductors is posing severe challenges.
According to Bloomberg News on Oct. 26 (local time), founder Morris Chang attended TSMC’s annual sports event at Hsinchu County Stadium, Taiwan, and stated that free trade in semiconductors, especially in the latest semiconductor sector, has died amid escalating geopolitical tensions, adding the TSMC’s challenge is how to continue growing in this environment.
While encouraging employees by highlighting TSMC’s record-breaking performance this year based on technological superiority, excellent manufacturing, and customer trust, Chang also noted that the most severe challenge lies ahead.
Chang recalled how he had predicted at the athletics meet five years ago that TSMC’s success would turn it into a strategic battleground for geopolitical strategists. During that period, the company has become a real battleground, he said.
Nevertheless, he expressed confidence, saying, “With an excellent team and leadership, I believe TSMC can continue to create miracles in the face of challenges.”
TSMC counts major big tech companies like Apple and NVIDIA among its clients and is a prominent beneficiary of the AI boom, producing about 99% of the world’s AI accelerators.
However, TSMC also finds itself at the forefront of the U.S.-China conflict surrounding the semiconductor industry.
In 2020, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Chinese telecommunications equipment company Huawei, citing national security concerns, preventing it from purchasing semiconductors made with U.S. equipment. At that time, TSMC announced that it had stopped accepting new orders from Huawei.
Currently, the U.S. Department of Commerce is investigating whether TSMC was involved in manufacturing AI and smartphone chips for Huawei, and TSMC is known to have halted product supply to one customer that delivered semiconductors to Huawei.